The ruling Janata Dal (United) in Bihar on Tuesday issued whip to party legislators, including the dissident group of MLAs led by former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, to vote for the Nitish Kumar government seeking a trust vote in the State Assembly on Wednesday. “The whip is applicable to all party legislators, including those suspended from the party or declared an attached member in the House. Those defying the whip will lose their membership within hours of the vote,” declared Shrawan Kumar, the JD(U)’s chief whip and Parliamentary Affairs Minister.
Mr. Kumar, who replaced Mr. Manjhi as Chief Minister on February 20, will seek a vote of confidence soon after the Governor’s address to the legislature on the first day of the budget session on Wednesday.
Mr. Manjhi had resigned from his post alleging “threat and intimidation” by the rival group of MLAs led by Mr. Kumar. Along with a group of loyalists, he launched a political front, Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), to “expose the real face of Nitish Kumar.”
The party whip has put Mr. Manjhi and his loyalists in a fix as defying the whip or even abstaining would invite termination of their membership of the House. The buzz in the political circles is that the Manjhi group of MLAs, said to be 10 in number, have approached the Opposition BJP to boycott the trust vote so that it will not take place.
But according to political experts, despite an Opposition walkout, the Speaker can ask the ruling party to prove its majority and, “in that case, the whip will be applicable to all the party MLAs.”
The BJP, which has 88 members, is yet to disclose its strategy. “The concern is not who wins the trust vote or who loses it but the important thing is that we’ll expose Nitish Kumar. We’ll ask him why the government has to seek a trust vote for the fourth time in 22 months,” Nand Kishore Yadav, the Leader of the Opposition, told The Hindu .
In the 243-member Assembly, the ruling party has to get the support of 117 MLAs as 10 seats are currently vacant. The JD(U) has 115 legislators, including 10 belonging to the Manjhi camp. It also has the support of 24 members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, five of the Congress and one each of the Communist Party of India and Independents.
